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121 Cooke, William Fothergill
SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications[br]b. 1806 Baling, London, Englandd. 25 June 1879 Farnham, Surrey, England[br]English physicist, pioneer of electric telegraphy.[br]The son of a surgeon who became Professor of Anatomy at Durham University, Cooke received a conventional classical education, with no science, in Durham and at Edinburgh University. He joined the East India Company's aimy in Madras, but resigned because of ill health in 1833. While convalescent, Cooke travelled in Europe and began making wax models of anatomical sections, possibly as teaching aids for his father. In Germany he saw an experimental electric-telegraph demonstration, and was so impressed with the idea of instantaneous long-distance communication that he dropped the modelling and decided to devote all his energies to developing a practical electric telegraph. His own instruments were not successful: they worked across a room, but not over a mile of wire. His search for scientific advice led him to Charles Wheatstone, who was working on a similar project, and together they obtained a patent for the first practical electric telegraph. Cooke's business drive and Wheatstone's scientific abilities should have made a perfect partnership, but the two men quarrelled and separated. Cooke's energy and enthusiasm got the telegraph established, first on the newly developing railways, then independently. Sadly, the fortune he made from the telegraph was lost in other ventures, and he died a poor man.[br]Further ReadingG.Hubbard, 1965, Cooke and Wheatstone and the Invention of the Electric Telegraph, London, Routledge \& Kegan Paul (provides a short account of Cooke's life; there is no full biography).BBBiographical history of technology > Cooke, William Fothergill
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122 Crampton, Thomas Russell
[br]b. 6 August 1816 Broadstairs, Kent, Englandd. 19 April 1888 London, England[br]English engineer, pioneer of submarine electric telegraphy and inventor of the Crampton locomotive.[br]After private education and an engineering apprenticeship, Crampton worked under Marc Brunel, Daniel Gooch and the Rennie brothers before setting up as a civil engineer in 1848. His developing ideas on locomotive design were expressed through a series of five patents taken out between 1842 and 1849, each making a multiplicity of claims. The most typical feature of the Crampton locomotive, however, was a single pair of driving wheels set to the rear of the firebox. This meant they could be of large diameter, while the centre of gravity of the locomotive remained low, for the boiler barrel, though large, had only small carrying-wheels beneath it. The cylinders were approximately midway along the boiler and were outside the frames, as was the valve gear. The result was a steady-riding locomotive which neither pitched about a central driving axle nor hunted from side to side, as did other contemporary locomotives, and its working parts were unusually accessible for maintenance. However, adhesive weight was limited and the long wheelbase tended to damage track. Locomotives of this type were soon superseded on British railways, although they lasted much longer in Germany and France. Locomotives built to the later patents incorporated a long, coupled wheelbase with drive through an intermediate crankshaft, but they mostly had only short lives. In 1851 Crampton, with associates, laid the first successful submarine electric telegraph cable. The previous year the brothers Jacob and John Brett had laid a cable, comprising a copper wire insulated with gutta-percha, beneath the English Channel from Dover to Cap Gris Nez: signals were passed but within a few hours the cable failed. Crampton joined the Bretts' company, put up half the capital needed for another attempt, and designed a much stronger cable. Four gutta-percha-insulated copper wires were twisted together, surrounded by tarred hemp and armoured by galvanized iron wires; this cable was successful.Crampton was also active in railway civil engineering and in water and gas engineering, and c. 1882 he invented a hydraulic tunnel-boring machine intended for a Channel tunnel.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsVice-President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (France).Bibliography1842, British patent no. 9,261.1845. British patent no. 10,854.1846. British patent no. 11,349.1847. British patent no. 11,760.1849, British patent no. 12,627.1885, British patent no. 14,021.Further ReadingM.Sharman, 1933, The Crampton Locomotive, Swindon: M.Sharman; P.C.Dewhurst, 1956–7, "The Crampton locomotive", Parts I and II, Transactions of the Newcomen Society 30:99 (the most important recent publications on Crampton's locomotives).C.Hamilton Ellis, 1958, Twenty Locomotive Men, Shepperton: Ian Allen. J.Kieve, 1973, The Electric Telegraph, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles, 102–4.R.B.Matkin, 1979, "Thomas Crampton: Man of Kent", Industrial Past 6 (2).PJGRBiographical history of technology > Crampton, Thomas Russell
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123 Nipkow, Paul Gottlieb
[br]b. 22 August 1860 Lauenburg, Pommern (now Lebork, Poland)d. 24 August 1940 Berlin, Germany[br]Polish electrical engineer who invented the Nipkow television scanning disc.[br]In 1884, while still a student engineer, Nipkow patented a mechanical television pick-up device using a disc with a spiral of twenty-four holes rotating at 600 rpm in front of a selenium cell. He also proposed a display on an identical synchronous disc in conjunction with a light-modulator based on the Faraday effect. Unfortunately it was not possible to realize a working system at the time because of the slow response of selenium cells and the lack of suitable electronic-sig-nal amplifiers; he was unable to pay the extension fees and so the patent lapsed. Others took up the idea, however, and in 1907 pictures were sent between London and Paris by wire. Subsequently, the principle was used by Baird, Ives, and Jenkins.For most of his working life after obtaining his doctorate, Nipkow was employed as an engineer by a company that made railway-signalling equipment, but his pioneering invention was finally recognized in 1934 when he was made Honorary President of the newly formed German Television Society.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPresident, German Television Society 1934.Bibliography1884, German patent no. 30,105 (Nipkow's pioneering method of television image-scanning).Further ReadingR.W.Hubbell, 1946, 4,000 Years of Television, London: G.Harrap \& Co.KF -
124 Sickels, Frederick Ellsworth
[br]b. 20 September 1819 Gloucester County, New Jersey, USAd. 8 March 1895 Kansas City, Missouri, USA[br]American inventor of a steam-inlet cut-off valve mechanism for engines and steam steering apparatus for ships.[br]Sickels was educated in New York City, where his father was a practising physician. As he showed mechanical aptitude, at the age of 16 he joined the Harlem Railroad as a rod man, and a year later became a machinist in the Allaire Works in New York, studying physics and mechanics in his spare time. He perfected his cut-off mechanism for drop valves in 1841 and patented it the following year. The liberating mechanism allowed the valve to fall quickly onto its seat and so eliminated "wire-drawing" of the steam, and Sickels arranged a dashpot to prevent the valve hitting the seat violently. Through further improvements patented in 1843 and 1845, he gained a considerable fortune, but he subsequently lost it through fighting patent infringements because his valve gear was copied extensively.In 1846 he turned his attention to using a steam engine to assist the steering in ships. He filed a patent application in 1849 and completed a machine in 1854, but he could not find any ship owner willing to try it until 1858, when it was fitted to the August. A patent was granted in 1860, but as no American ship owners showed interest Sickels went to England, where he obtained three British patents; once again, however, he found no interest. He returned to the United States in 1867 and continued his fruitless efforts until he was financially ruined. He patented improved compound engines in 1875 and also contributed improvements in sinking pneumatic piles. He turned to civil engineering and engaged in railway and bridge construction in the west. In about 1890 he was made Consulting Engineer to the National Water Works Company of New York and in 1891 became Chief Engineer of its operations at Kansas City.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of American Biography, 1935, Vol. XVII, New York: C.Scribner's Sons. C.T.Porter, 1908, Engineering Reminiscences, reprinted 1985, Bradley, Ill.: Lindsay Publications (comments on his cut-off valve gear).H.G.Conway, 1955–6, "Some notes on the origins of mechanical servo systems", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 29 (comments on his steam steering apparatus).RLHBiographical history of technology > Sickels, Frederick Ellsworth
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